PlayStation Could Be Announcing New Powerful PS4 Soon, Report Says

The rumors and build-up for Sony's new PS4.5 are gaining a lot more traction and a lot more ground. It's not like the images being released every once in a while for the Nintendo NX that turn out to be fake. In this case, the latest report on the PS4.5 (or PS4K) is that it's going to be announced soon.

Originally the Wall Street Journal did a report on Sony utilizing their leverage in the console market to introduce the new PS4.5 as a solution for the demands of VR, and possible 4K media consumption.

If you don't have a subscription to the WSJ, Game Informer does a quick recap basically breaking down the report into the core things that gamers care about: that Sony will be announcing the PlayStation 4.5 soon and that it will launch before the PlayStation VR, which is due for release in October. They also note that the report points to Sony wanting to use the PS4.5 as a way to lure in consumers looking for a high-end console experience willing to pay a lot more for something more powerful than the current PlayStation 4. They don't list actual specs or pricing details in the report, though.

The comment section on the article makes a lot of really good points, from the price to the hardware to the concept of a console playing games at 4K. While there are obviously some communities who are likely going to believe that the PS4.5 could be capable of playing games at 4K, a detailed report by Digital Foundry had rolled through some of the specs and pricing possibilities for Sony and AMD, and it doesn't seem likely that 4K gaming is going to be possible for the PS4.5 if it wants to stay under $1,000 and keep its living room-ready form factor.

Most agree that a bump up in GPU power and a clock boost to the CPU is likely what gamers are going to get with this new PlayStation 4. It certainly wouldn't be anywhere near possible to play mid-budget or AAA games at 4K resolution – especially given that the GTX 980 Ti and the Titan X still have a lot of trouble running games at 4K and can only do so above 60fps when in SLI mode, and keep in mind that the Titan X is a $1,000 GPU.

When $1,000 cards can barely benchmark above 50fps on ultra settings on AAA games running at 4K, there's no way in the world that Sony can manage to squeeze a GPU onto the APU for the PS4.5 and keep it under a $600 price point. Others also brought out what was mentioned in the Digital Foundry article, highlighting the fact that even if multiple chips were small enough to be packed into the PS4.5 to produce enough juice to render at 4K in Xfire mode, there would be a serious heating issue to deal with. Form factor would have to be thrown out the window for something that could stay cool under pressure, otherwise a design like the current PS4 with chips powerful enough to handle 4K could pose a serious fire hazard.

Reasonably so, most people assume that the upgrades are strictly related to the VR capabilities and requirements of the PlayStation VR, which is due out this fall. They believe that a byproduct of the upgrade is that the new console iteration would support viewing movies, video and other media at 4K without any problems, but gaming would likely be off the table.

Either way, the rumors are that Sony will announce “soon” and that “soon” translates into this June at E3 in Los Angeles, California. Sony is mum about the PS4.5 right now, but we'll see what they have in store... soon.